Outcaste by Fletcher DeLancey

Author:Fletcher DeLancey [DeLancey, Fletcher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Heartsome Publishing
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

40

REPORTING IN

Lancer Tal’s battle plan was spectacularly effective, though Rahel did not envy her scholars. According to the new instructions, the only way for untrained high empaths to overwrite existing loyalties was to empathically force the Voloth to love them. Her scholars had been horrified, then disgusted, then reluctantly convinced.

Now each of them had an adoring Voloth constantly watching them, eager for confirmation that they were doing the right thing as they fired missiles at other ground pounders. Language was no barrier when their only goal was to please.

Even Rahel felt buffeted by the unfronted emotions sloshing around the crammed interior of their ground pounder. Her blocks were not strong enough to shut it all out, but at least she could reduce it. The scholars needed to track those emotions as a means of communication, and were forced to endure it without any blocks at all.

Every captured ground pounder was marked with a beacon, enabling Rahel to determine which were friendly and which they should destroy. As the battle wore on, it became more and more difficult to find any under Voloth control. At one point, when she watched their Voloth happily consign four fellow soldiers to another expanding ball of flame, she wondered what would happen if the overwritten loyalties were returned. How could they live with the knowledge of what they had done to their own people?

Then she thought of Pria, giving his life to save a scholar and dying with such courage, and her hand strayed to her weapon. She would gladly shoot every Voloth in this ground pounder and consider it a service to her world. They were invaders who had come here with no provocation; they deserved their fate.

Her team had walked their ground pounder all the way into the city when Shantu put a general call through to all units. The battle was over, not just in Whitesun but across Alsea. All enemy units had been neutralized, including the aerial fighters that comprised the second wave of the invasion.

He ended with an order for team leaders to contact Central Command and provide their current location, number and status of Voloth prisoners, and the names and statuses of their own casualties.

Rahel reported in. “One fatality,” she said at the end. “Guard Pria. My surviving warriors brought his body to Whitesun Base while I rode in the ground pounder with the scholars.”

Isolated in her own corner of the battle, she had no idea how fortunate they had been until the warrior taking her information told her that many teams had lost multiple warriors or scholars, and quite a few had been wiped off the battlefield altogether.

She remembered the rapidgun tearing up the ground and did not doubt it.

It was another hantick before they could offload their prisoners. She was exhausted by then, both from lack of sleep and the adrenaline drain. What she wanted now was a hot meal and a bed, not necessarily in that order.

More than that, though, she wanted to hear Sharro’s voice.

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